Guest blogger Kim DeShaw writes about a situation many of us can identify with…

Imagine this.  It is 2 days before Thanksgiving, and I am at Super Target for the second time, shopping for all of the essentials I’d forgotten the first time.

Pumpkin. Check.

Cream Cheese. Check.

Kids…Wait.  No kids.  I am at Super Target by MYSELF!  This hasn’t happened in months!  My husband seemed to sense that I had too much on my plate to make this trip with one or both of our kids, so he kept them at home. 

Sweet, sweet silence, not to mention room on the cart seat for my purse!

I was really enjoying rushing through my well organized shopping list, eager to get home and started on my Pumpkin Cheesecake, (Thanks Emeril!) when I ran into her in the baking aisle.

You know her, you’ve seen her.

She’s the mom with the screaming kid. She was obviously doing the same as I. Shopping for things she could not do without with the grocery stores closing for the holiday. 

Daughter was strapped into the seat of one of the big monster carts, kicking, screaming and flailing about.

She wanted to go a different direction. The mom patiently told her that no.

We made eye contact, I gave a knowing smile and said “Let me guess, she’s three?” Mom just nodded and said “Yep, she turned three last month.”

Fifteen minutes later I was paying for my groceries and she was a few lanes down, more stressed now, and daughter was still throwing a fit.

Now being that it was right before Thanksgiving, you can imagine that Super Target had more lanes open than normal, all with customers paying for their goods.

You could see heads shaking, and you could see parents whose face clearly said “Glad it’s not mine.”

Others were indifferent, and others clearly sympathetic. My own cashier told me that if her kids ever acted like that she would smack them.

I’ve been there in her shoes.  I’ve abandoned a cart with an apology and walked out with my son. I’ve also relented and put a toy into my cart, only to sneak it to the cashier saying “I don’t actually want this” when it came time to check out.

I’ve even walked in and out of a Target approximately 14 times trying to win a battle of wills with my son over which kind of cart we were going to use. Ultimately I had to get in, get what I needed and get out, but with a normal cart (at 32 pounds he wanted the cart with the infant seat) and without screaming and crying.

What do you do when it is your kid? What do you do when it isn’t? Roll your eyes? Or do you do what a stranger finally did for this frazzled mom? She walked over and asked if the girl would calm down if mom held her.

Mom undid the straps and held her, daughter calmed down immediately, and the stranger pushed this mom’s cart to her car.

I only wish I had thought of that.

Read Kim’s blog here.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 7th, 2007 at 10:39 am and is filed under Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.